


Appraisal

by Bediveres_Arm



Category: Fate/Grand Order
Genre: Non-binary character, Other, paranoia turned friendship, these are goredolf loving hours
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:27:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28816338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bediveres_Arm/pseuds/Bediveres_Arm
Summary: For a little while, Goredolf Musik thought things were finally going his way.They were not and currently are not. But he's also not a man who gives up easily, and when he becomes suspicious about the loyalty of one of Chaldea's few surviving employees, he takes it upon himself to conduct his own investigation into their past. Unfortunately, reality is a... bit different than what he was expecting, and at every turn, he finds himself surprised by the discoveries he comes to make.or: Goredolf accidentally developing feelings for one (1) very stupid bird.
Relationships: Goredolf Musik/OC
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	Appraisal

The first time he sees them, he does not even acknowledge their presence, because he’s far too busy asserting control over his new acquisition and that mouthy Caster in charge isn’t willing to let things go without a fight.

They’re a fidgeting thing with dark skin and fluffy hair, and while he gets a better look at them during their interrogation, his gaze slips off them like water and continues down to the suspiciously blank employment records that have been offered up for his inspection. They do not seem to have a resume, Goredolf notes, at least none that survived a disaster that put forty-seven Master candidates in cryostasis, and all he can tell about their identity is their name and that they’ve spent the past few years slaving away as a Command Room Technician overseeing the various Rayshifts conducted by Chaldea.

Their performance reviews indicate nothing amiss beyond besides a chronic habit towards overwork, though he does not understand how that could possibly be the case, given the absolute dishevelment of their appearance and the complete lack of respect they show him as they slam their palms down on the table and yell that they’re telling the _truth,_ that the forty-eighth Master _saved the entire world._

This does not look like someone who takes pride in themself or their job, and Goredolf shrugs and moves along.

As he wanders the halls of the observatory, he is not simply satisfied; he is _proud._ It is a beautiful building, a towering monument to human ingenuity, and right now, it is all his. He, who was able to recognize its worth. He, who used his cunning and wits to snatch it out from underneath the Tower Lords. These shining walls and glistening floors will make him famous and restore to the Musik name the honor it deserves.

“…Director,” he hears from behind him, and despite the tone it’s said in, the word makes his heart swell with pride.

“Yes?”

Goredolf stops, hands folded behind his back as he turns. This is their third encounter, and Goredolf finds the way they’ve got their fists clenched and shoulders set in determination to be absolutely laughable.

“…Is it really true? At the end of the year — you intend to fire us all?”

He had not been scared when he came to this place — he would immediately dismiss anyone who would dare spread such drivel — but he did arrive with an extremely healthy amount of distrust. It was a lesson that any reputable mage must learn early, to never, _ever_ take anyone at face value, and even if only half the claims of their activities were true, Chaldea was a fantastically dangerous organization in possession of an apocalyptic amount of power.

But this person, with a uniform that didn’t quite fit and who had the atmosphere of someone who was always on the verge of tripping over their own feet, made all those concerns seem like a far off dream. If this was the sort of employee Chaldea hired, then the operation here would be a cinch.

“It’s not being _fired,_ ” he said, brushing them off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “It’s really more of a… restructuring. It will hardly blemish your record.”

 _Not that there’s any record of you to blemish,_ he thinks, but keeps to himself. It’s not his problem, what will happen to these people once they’ve left this place, and he’s far too busy of a man to care about someone who likely only got a job out of nepotism or pity.

He was just about to leave them to stew when they looked up at him suddenly, a single, bright eye staring up at him from a tousled mess of hair. “If you wanted a natural and untarnished Chaldea,” they begin, their gaze piercing. “You must have seen something beautiful in it, right? So why are you getting rid of all those who love it the most?”

He is taken aback more by their brazen naivety more than anything else, and he chuckles as she shakes his head. “I’m given to understand,” he says, smiling, “That Professor Lynor was a valued and respected member of the Chaldea Security Organization before his betrayal in 2017, yes?”

The technician opens their mouth, then closes it again before deflating and looking away. “That’s correct.”

“Then you’ll see why I’m hesitant to trust an organization that’s already been breached once, and instead would prefer to staff it with people who I’ve vetted personally. Now, unless you have anything more to say…?”

“…No, sir,” they mumble. For some reason, Goredolf feels relief at this; there was something about the way they looked at him that he just didn’t _like,_ and he wanted it to be gone as soon as people.

It’s as he’s leaving that he hears, “It’ll be your loss in the end, Director. These people — they’re the best thing I’ve ever known.”

Goredolf snorts, but does not even stop to look back. What would a fool like that know about perfection?.

(He is proven wrong, of course. About _everything._ )

When the sirens blare and Chaldea is ripped apart by sparkling frost, it is not just fear he feels; it is grief. At failures and frozen dreams, at dying alone, unrecognized, and unloved in a cold world devoid of affection or care. He begs for his life over the PA system, and by the end he’s just spilling his guts onto the floor, knowing that he is going to die but wanting someone, at least, to know his story.

That’s all he’s ever wanted: to be _known,_ but there is no kindness in these lifeless hallways.

And then there is.

Reaching out for his hand, somebody comes.

Everything after that goes so fast — fighting, fleeing, being saved and almost dying, the blasted _aliens_ — that it wasn’t until they were submerged within the depths of Zero Space that Goredolf Musik has the time to think about anything coherent at all. Most of his thoughts amount to panicked internal screaming, of course, an inability to accept the current situation or that, despite everything, someone ran forward to save him. At the back of his mind echoes _they’re the best thing I’ve ever known,_ and he rubs his forehead in frustration.

 _That cannot be true,_ he thinks. _Perfection is in plans and confidence and power,_ and he rationalizes that Master Candidate 48 must have realized that Goredolf would be a useful bargaining chip if kept alive. Or perhaps they simply recognized that without a competent Director, everything would fall completely apart.

It’s as he’s wandering through the halls of the Shadow Border, thinking about how much dingier is seems compared to the Chaldea he’d been dreaming of, when he realizes that they are there as well, that simple little technician, sitting with their knees pulled up to their chest and their bare toes curled against the chair leather. They’re talking with someone over their headset — da Vinci from the computer room, most likely — chatting about the technical specifications of the Logic Armor and the readings they were picking up from the world that once was.

 _Huginn,_ he finally registers, _that’s what their name is_ , and after everything that had happened over the past twenty-four hours, this realization makes a neuron fire in suspicion. Koyanskaya’s betrayal still stung, and the mere fact that any of them had survived was a miracle in and of itself.

Miracles, he knew, could be engineered. Goredolf sat in the unoccupied seat next to them with a frown.

“I’m serious, little lady! Even at the coordinates where Mt. Everest should be, the parameters are — oh, uh. Hello.” A squint. They sit up straighter. “Sir. Sorry, I was just going over some readings with Miss da Vinci. Is there something you need?”

There is a bowl of popcorn balanced against their chest, he notices. Goredolf frowns.

“What kind of readings?”

 _Crunch, crunch._ “From outside. We’re currently trying to determine the… status of the world.”

“And?”

“The results are inconclusive,” they say somewhat breezily, which was honestly ridiculous given they were sans shoes and eating popcorn out of a chipped bowl with little rabbit patterns detailed around the rim. Goredolf watches as they idly scribble something on a pad of paper next to them; shifting, he can see that it is a formula involving a complex bit of rune-work he doesn’t recognize.

_No resume, no employment history, and it’d be dead-easy for someone to play the fool, get comfortable inside humanity’s last remaining bastion of resistance, and betray them from the inside._

“Say,” he says conversationally. “Where did you learn to do all this, exactly?”

The reply is exceptionally vague. “Oh, here and there. On the job training. That sort of thing.”

“I can’t imagine that…” Goredolf gesture at Huginn, and the work they’ve got up on their display. “Well, _that_ was part of the job description.”

“A lot of the principles are the same as identifying Singularities. It isn’t that different.”

He may not be an expert on null-space and void travel, but even that sounds like an absolute, bold-faced _lie._ “And the runes?”

“Runes?”

Goredolf nods to the paper. “That formula. It looks to be the beginnings of some manner of protective script? Is it for a Mystic Code?”

Huginn pauses, hand flattening to cover the notebook, and they shift their attention to Goredolf’s face. _Oh, I will absolutely be getting a look at that later,_ he thinks.

“…Maybe, but it’s nothing special. Many of the Servants Miss Fujimaru summoned had a great understanding of Magecraft like this. I learned a thing or two.”

“Heroic Spirits, willing to teach someone who isn’t even their master? That’s impressive.”

There is a long moment when the two of them simply stare at each other. Huginn is the first to break it, and Goredolf can hear the contemplative crunch of popcorn as they flick a piece into their mouth. “…I wouldn’t say so,” they say, eventually. “It’s just the sort of thing anyone could do, in those circumstances. I’m pretty ordinary.”

“I think anyone who is hired to work at a secluded base in Antarctica is, by mere definition, unordinary.” A brief pause. “Well, aside from Candidate Ritsuka. She seems a bit — “

“She’s not ordinary,” they interrupt, gaze sharpening. Ah-ha, finally getting something out of them! “Or — rather… I know you don’t believe she was capable of saving the world, but she did. I watched her do it, every step of the way. And,” they stress, frowning down at the readings spread out before them. “We all did what we could to help her, because there was really no other choice. What was special was our belief. Our bonds. …Our trust. I don’t think it was anything fundamental to do with us… even in the case of Miss Fujimaru.”

“Bonds,” Goredolf muses, then leans back into the chair and stares at the darkness beyond the window. “I suppose that’s why you were upset that I was dismantling Chaldea’s staff, then.”

It took awhile, and when the word came, it was soft. “Yes.”

Hm. “I’m not going to apologize for that. It was the most sensible decision.”

“…I know.”

Goredolf watches as their hand begins to move again, and they adjust a dial and make a few more notations. Something about the atmosphere is… oppressive, though that’s hardly unique to this one encounter. He knows none of Chaldea’s remaining staff — _his staff —_ have that faith in him that Huginn described. For Pete’s sake, that Ritsuka girl had had to come _save_ him, and everyone had heard his… display over the PA system. Hearing his weakness like that, how could anyone take him seriously?

That’s probably why this ‘Huginn’ felt that they could just dodge every one of his questions with misdirections and outright lies.

Still…

“That doesn’t mean it’s not my responsibility to keep you all safe now.”

“ — Huh?”

“The Chaldea Security Organization still exists,” he explains. “Even if all that’s left of it is what’s in here… it hasn’t been erased. And, like it or not, I am your Director. It would reflect terribly on me if I let something I own fall apart as soon as I’ve taken control of it.”

 _Which is why I am going to find out what the hell you’re hiding, before it can bite me in the ass,_ he thinks with a regal sort of confidence. Huginn is staring at him, a bit like a deer facing an oncoming train — ah, have they finally figured out he’s _on_ to them? — but then he sees something curving up on their face.

It is a smile. A ridiculous, positively dopey smile, and they set their pencil down and hold out the bowl in their lap to him.

“Do you want some popcorn?” They ask. It takes Goredolf a good few blinks to fully process what he’s being asked, and even then he can only say — “Huh?”

Huginn isn’t looking at him anymore, but they set the bowl down on the flat piece of the console between them. “I only managed to snag a few packets from the break room during all the commotion, but… you can have some. If you want. I thought it might be nice.”

Goredolf, in contrast, is floored. “…When Chaldea was being attacked, you wasted time grabbing food from the _break room?”_

“Well, yeah.”

“ _Why?”_

All they have to say for themself is, “What’s the point of life without having at least some of its little pleasures?”

“That was incredibly reckless. You could have _died._ ”

 _Unless,_ he thinks, _they really are a traitor, and knew they wouldn’t get killed no matter what they did._

“Probably,” they say with a shrug, and then turn to him with another little smile. “But what’s done is done. Are you going to profit off of my sacrifices, or what?”

Goredolf was pretty certain he was being screwed with right now, and he definitely, absolutely didn’t appreciate this evasive little shit or their obvious attempts to distract him from being questioned. Still. In the last twenty-four hours, he’s been betrayed, shot at, had his soul forced out of his body and then back in again, and is currently in a large metal box traveling through the sea of Imaginary Number Space, a place home to forgotten gods and things from outside the boundaries of the world.

So maybe they were right, and he should appreciate the little things, like irresponsibly obtained popcorn from a person he one-hundred percent didn’t trust. He grabbed a handful — it was pretty good — and he continued to watch them with the — (in his mind) — keen thoroughness of a hawk.

Goredolf Musik had already been tricked once, and everything had already fallen apart. By their fourth meeting, he had this in his heart: he was _not_ going to be taken for a fool again.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading my extremely self-indulgent fanfic.


End file.
